The bar and restaurant service industry requires tables to be cleaned and reset quickly for customers. In many casual dining establishments, a goal is to provide quick and efficient dine-in service. Many of these dining establishments utilize silverware, or rather, reusable utensils, which reduces waste. Moreover, in many of these establishments, the types of food served cannot be comfortably eaten or cut for eating when using disposable or plastic utensils. To further efficiently provide utensils in a clean manner, many of these establishments provide the utensils pre-wrapped with a napkin when setting a table for customers or diner use.
In preparation for efficient meal service, reusable utensils (i.e. flatware or silverware including knives, forks and/or spoons) must be cleaned and prepared for diners' use. Most restaurants prepare these utensils for diners' use in large quantities and in advance of busier meal times. The utensils are generally provided along with napkins. The prior art includes devices for folding a plurality of flat materials, such as napkins, and examples of these devices are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,002,331 and 4,349,185. When tables are cleaned and re-set between diners, it is more efficient for the restaurant to provide common utensils, a knife and fork, and occasionally a spoon, pre-wrapped in a napkin. Thus, when re-setting a table, the person setting simply grabs enough wrapped utensils per the seats at the table.
The prior art also includes automatic devices limited to sorting utensils using a variety of bulky and inefficient methods including liquid reservoirs for sorting utensils by buoyancy as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,655,663; or the incorporation of vibrating beds to move individual utensils for sorting based on the size or shape of a barrier as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,956,109. Prior art methods of moving and sorting utensils are also described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,996,809 and include the use of belts having grasping mechanisms and magnetic members to retrieve individual utensils from a bin holding a plurality of utensils.
Utensils are generally wrapped in a napkin and such preparation is completed manually, by hand rolling. Employees must hand-roll a knife and fork or other utensils, together in a napkin and secure the wrapped utensils in a pre-adhered paper napkin ring. Employees must take a clean knife and fork from separate bins, place them together with a napkin and roll the napkin around the utensils. Many employees may work on this never-ending task during slow times or before a restaurant opens or after the restaurant closes each day. This task is labor intensive and slow.